Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American author, journalist, and poet, born on June 24, 1842, in a log cabin at Horse Cave Creek in Meigs County, Ohio. He became one of the most forceful literary voices of the Civil War generation and of late nineteenth-century American journalism. A prolific and versatile writer, he was regarded as one of the most influential journalists in the United States, a pioneering writer of realist fiction, and a feared literary critic. His horror writing has been ranked with that of Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft, while S. T. Joshi has speculated that Bierce may be the greatest satirist America has produced.

Bierce grew up in a poor but literary family. His parents, Marcus Aurelius Bierce and Laura Sherwood Bierce, gave him a deep love for books and writing. He was the tenth of thirteen children, all with names beginning with “A.” His ancestry reached back to the Puritan migration, and his mother was a descendant of William Bradford, though Bierce often wrote critically of “Puritan values” and of people who made too much of genealogy. He grew up in Kosciusko County, Indiana, attended high school in Warsaw, and left home at fifteen to work as a printer’s devil at the abolitionist newspaper the Northern Indianan.

The American Civil War marked Bierce’s imagination for life. After briefly attending the Kentucky Military Institute, he enlisted in the Union Army’s 9th Indiana Infantry. He served in Western Virginia, was present at the Battle of Philippi, and drew newspaper attention for rescuing a gravely wounded comrade under fire at Rich Mountain. He fought at Shiloh in April 1862, a terrifying experience that later fed several short stories and his memoir “What I Saw of Shiloh.” Commissioned a first lieutenant in 1863, he served as a topographical engineer on General William Babcock Hazen’s staff. In June 1864 he suffered a traumatic brain injury at Kennesaw Mountain, returned to duty in September, and resigned in January 1865 because of the continued effects of the wound.

After the war, Bierce joined Hazen on an expedition across the Great Plains, ending in San Francisco, where he was awarded the rank of brevet major before leaving the Army. San Francisco became the center of his newspaper career. He wrote for and edited publications including The San Francisco News Letter, The Argonaut, the Overland Monthly, The Californian, and The Wasp, where he began the column “Prattle.” He lived in England from 1872 to 1875, contributed to Fun magazine, and published his first book, The Fiend’s Delight, in London in 1873 under the pseudonym “Dod Grile.” He later became one of the first regular columnists and editorialists for William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner, remaining associated with Hearst Newspapers until 1909.

Bierce is best known for The Devil’s Dictionary, named one of “The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature” by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration; for “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” described as one of the most famous and frequently anthologized stories in American literature; and for Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, also published as In the Midst of Life, named by the Grolier Club among the 100 most influential American books printed before 1900. In 1896, while reporting against a railroad refinancing bill in Washington, D.C., he answered Collis P. Huntington’s demand to name his price with: “My price is one hundred thirty million dollars.” The bill was defeated after Bierce’s coverage stirred public anger. In 1913 he told reporters he was going to Mexico for first-hand experience of the Mexican Revolution. He disappeared and was never seen again. His sentences still bite because they come from lived war, hard newsrooms, sharp skepticism, and a mind trained to strip comfort from cant.